Bringing an Organization Together For Efficient Scale

Pete Thornton 0:00
All right. Welcome back to The SaaS(ramp) Podcast. I’m your host, Podcast Pete, welcoming Justin Marinovich to the show today really excited to have Justin on the show, VP of sales at hypergrowth organization, Betterworks. Welcome to the show, Justin.

Justin Marinovich 0:20
Yeah. Thanks, Pete. Happy to be here. Appreciate it.

Pete Thornton 0:23
Awesome to have you here. We kind of we had a little pre-show chat and everything like that. And we’re like, Oh, we’ll get we’ll talk about this. We’ll talk about that. But it’s always nice to just jump straight in and get into those challenges. So VP sales, you got plenty on your plate. So what’s the last six months look like? What’s kind of top challenges?

Justin Marinovich 0:40
Yes, good question. The last six months have definitely seen some shifts, both from the folks we’re speaking with, on the customer side, the economy, things going on internally, etc. We still have a good busy field here at Betterworks, which is great. But I would say right to it. One of the biggest challenge the last six months, just externally is navigating those new budgets, a lot of organizations revamping budgets, unsure about what’s going to happen next year, really making sure that sales reps on the team and across the board, along leadership, we can really get access to the executive sponsors and accounts, they’re controlling and getting more and more involved in projects that they choose from top to bottom, how they’re going to support their employees. So from our reps perspective and our leadership’s perspective, it’s really navigating and fighting for that shared budget and getting to the right level. In other words, when those deals and get the right level participation and ownership on the customer, and let’s say aside from that, something in the same vein because that’s a big topic in itself, is something that we can look to internally is time management. And just making sure that AES are spending the right time on the right deals, and really doubling down on those that we know are going to pay off from a really lucrative long-term partnership and folks that we can help versus entertaining those tire kickers and getting distracted with the newest shiny object and things of that nature.

Pete Thornton 2:03
Okay, okay. Yeah. So if I’m hearing two of them here correctly, navigating kind of like the budgetary items that are a little bit more intense now that economic headwinds has that the headwinds. I’m living on the coast here. Like there’s like tropical storm brewing up in the next 12 hours or something. And I hear headwinds more in hypergrowth SaaS than I do in the local stock. But that’s for sure a piece. So navigating the budgetary discussions, and then and then just time management, just making sure that you’re spending the right time with the right people, things that are always important that are just more of a priority now. Is that what I’m kind of hearing?

Justin Marinovich 2:40
Yep, that’s exactly right.

Pete Thornton 2:42
Yeah. Okay. Totally understandable, and especially for your role, then there are so many things. So this is why this is a little bit of a tougher piece. So I’m always curious about what a VP of sales will actually say, but if there’s one thing you’re choosing as FY 23 comes around, and everything like, well, one thing that you’re trying to prioritize to get right for your org, what might that be?

Justin Marinovich 3:05
That’s a good one. For me, it’s having ownership across the board internally as we grow, as we scale, making sure that each rep and each person in the organization really takes ownership for how we need to change and how we need to scale while being able to maintain success across the board, works as a business value. You know, ‘be a CEO.’ And I truly believe that’s one of the most important things, and every rep can become their own CEO of their territory, where they have that level of self-ownership, self creativity, they can be accountable for their failures and be confident and transparent in opening up and discussing those as a team, continue to stay scrappy, ultimately win, and beat the competition. I think that’s so important to have that mindset from top to bottom throughout the organization that we really need to focus on internally to be successful moving forward.

Pete Thornton 3:58
Nice. Okay, I like that one. So because when you were explaining it at first was like, take ownership bit. Like, it can mean a lot of things, but then when you broke it down into BSE, yeah, that’s a solid, I really do like that. Because in early growth SaaS, like hypergrowth, like a lot of people have to wear a lot of hats. And if you’re going to want to go ahead and think of it from like that intrapreneurship angle, like that would be motivating to me as a rep, or, or as an enablement leader. I’d like that either way. Follow up, then, like, how do you encourage or reward or reinforce that type of behavior? Because it’s like one of those value statements things it’s, it looks good in onboarding? And then does it apply to week two and beyond?

Justin Marinovich 4:40
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a fair call out. I appreciate getting called out as much as I can. The idea is that it’s actually something we do for our customers. So when you think about better works, it is really performance enablement. And it’s really focused around setting the right objectives for an organization having those ongoing coaching conversations, providing ongoing feedback. recognition, etc, should around the employee’s performance but how we really develop ownership around that something that I instill with my team on a regular basis from a quarterly perspective? Is weaving in their professional skill set development, along with what they need to achieve operationally. So it’s not just are you hitting your numbers? Are you talking to the right people? Are you getting behind the messaging that we’re, that we’re preaching it better works, and do you really own it, but it’s are you developing as a person, and I believe if that’s when managers become leaders, is when they can really weave those conversations together. And not only have them hit their operational goals, but have them hit their personal career growth and development goals as well, I get super excited when I see other people on the team close their first big deal, or you have a coaching and strategy session during one on one or one of those quarterly reviews. And then they apply it effectively themselves within a deal. And they see how it changes the conversation between the prospect or customer and the shift to more being able to identify business pain and kind of growing within their own role, their own skill set, which then ultimately does turn around and help them achieve their operational objectives. Right. So it does come hand in hand, but it’s weaving them in together where that becomes very real and goes beyond just week two because there’s always ongoing coaching and development that you can have as an individual, especially as a rep.

Pete Thornton 6:21
That’s cool. Okay, yeah, I really do like that. You touched on a little bit. It’s another question I like to ask if it makes sense. In this case, it feels like it does. Would that be your favorite type of leadership moment? Or do you have something else that really kind of like juices you up as a leader?

Justin Marinovich 6:39
That’s a good one favorite leadership moment. Yeah, it’s always when the new rapper first-time rap locks down there, their first big deal, they get super excited that so that’s a repetitive one, because we got folks doing that all the time. But it’s the first one at a new company when they get real jobs, and they can sort of see the light for not just success now, but success in the future as well.

Pete Thornton 7:03
I’ve got a spreadsheet over here on the other screen. Everybody has like 14 screens. And so we call it day one to do one, because it’s not ramped, it’s not full quota. It’s not all of those things that you’re gonna roll up to the board. But it’s that first aha moment, have you gone through the whole cycle in a successful manner, and it’s an oftentimes, it’s very quick, and if they can get a quick early win, I don’t know if it’s nature or nurture on how that goes. But it is a super exciting portion to and you’re like, Alright, see in nine months when you hit full quota, or blah, blah, blah, but you can get to do one and a couple of months. And I think their stats around it like that, that maintain that they’ll do more successful moving forward as well. So that’s a pragmatic one as well as like kind of like an emotionally.

Justin Marinovich 7:49
It’s a great point. I mean, expediting the process, right? Throughout the enablement the individual when they first come on board, pays dividends down the road. So spot on it. Love the additional context there, too.

Pete Thornton 8:02
That’s awesome. Yeah, cool. Okay, so your VP sales like these are things that people want to be on LinkedIn earlier today, I saw a job description. I don’t know if it was like released out of New York or something. It was one of these that had to have the salary next to it. But I was like, really? Is that? Is that really how that works? So anyway, you’re in a role that a lot of people want to be in. So tell us about, like, just in a little bit like personal professional experiences kind of led into the role?

Justin Marinovich 8:29
I was sort of tossed into startups. right out of school, I graduated from Santa Clara University, was a finance major that I was going to do the Wall Street, they straight out of college, or senior project and when my finance classes was to actually create the business, go out and find somebody on campus that’s not in the finance department, basically, quasi co-founder for my kind of a theoretical perspective and go create a business. Well, my professor turned around and said, you don’t have a network of investors, you got to make this the real deal. So that senior project transformed into meeting introduction or getting introductions to folks that were in the VC world in the startup tech space. And luckily enough, Santa Clara is in the epicenter of all that right smack dab in the Bay Area. So that really transcended me into learning by fire. I mean, some of my very first meetings out of college, I’m sitting in rooms giving presentations to people worth billions of dollars, so I had to really learn by doing and coach myself and tap into my network and go back to the university and leverage different programs at Santa Clara had to really expedite my experience, which then led me to both quasi managing the product because you’re a small scrappy startup three people as you continue to try to grow while also managing the business side. So I was sort of became a jack of all trades, master of none, for lack of a better metaphor fairly quickly. But what I ended up loving and how I ended up kind of progressing to the sales side of things. I actually found that people were extremely complex and interesting. Someone described people in other ways. But I tend to find people challenging in numbers relatively easy. So I was sort of drawn to that challenge of people sort of business in the sales side just sort of became much more interesting to me than it did become managing a product or crunching numbers or anything like that. So I take a very numbers approach to sort of a pragmatic product roadmap-like approach to how we sell. And there’s a little bit of between the art and the science of selling there. But it’s sort of walked me through this career of being at an account executive, kind of moving up the chain throughout the size of deals that we were accomplishing, and working towards. And I really found a lot of success in the enterprise sales space, working with larger organizations, more longer-term deals, having some complexity and strategy to those deals was very entertaining and very rewarding to me, and not so much on the side of being transactional. But really being more working with strategic leaders getting to understand their business. And having a sense of urgent curiosity about myself within my deals, I believe helped me set me apart. So once finding success in the account executive role. I’m fortunate enough to have a great leadership team myself, that that I work very closely with, that had faith and trust in me and along faith and trust them around my peers, in cross functional groups that we work with closely a Betterworks put myself in a position to be able to lead the commercial vocal team for us.

Pete Thornton 11:23
That’s awesome. That’s very cool. So this thing that started out as a senior project, like a theoretical piece, like it came together well, and then your professor said, hey, look, this is an A, but it’s also could be a business, essentially, like, let’s put you in touch with some of these folks.

Justin Marinovich 11:41
That’s absolutely right. And ever since then, I immediately fell in love with startups, like I was drinking the Kool-Aid right away, or during the champagne, rather, whatever he’d like to, whenever you like putting your tap the, it’s pretty typical first force first startup, completely failed, had no idea what we’re doing. But we learned a ton. And I can easily attribute a lot to what I imply now and how I work with people in the confidence that I was able to have early in my career, when being the dumbest person in the room and talking to these fortune 50 executives, all stem from being tossed into the lion’s den so early on in my career, and even though it is kind of backward in how my career has grown and transformed over time, I still attribute so much to the first four years of me co-founding a couple of startups and being part of that experience, understand what the conversations are, like in the boardroom with investors, how executives are strategizing how product and sales comes together to be a very effective sales leader, and be able to understand the inner workings of a business in itself as a whole rather than very single threaded.

Pete Thornton 12:52
Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense. You are the second VP of sales. He has also VP sales in a month who are like former I don’t know if you were CEO or not, but the founder, who are like had an initial you call it a failure if you want to, because you don’t still have that business going. But it’s it was just because I needed to go take on the sales route at this point. And then maybe I’ll loop back here. And that was and he also had great connections and contacts and people willing to speak to them from a place of knowledge and kind of gave that advice. So cool, cool, cool path, right there. Really interesting.

One more thing on that point, the numbers aspects, say your numbers-driven. So I know that’s helpful from we’re doing pipeline, we’re doing forecasting, we’re doing these numbers-driven, roll now you’re having to look at everybody’s number, a team number, roll that number upwards. But there’s your there’s the numbers piece play into processes. Are you fairly process-driven? Are you? Do you find yourself delivering cycles and things like that to the team trying to look at things holistically and roll them out?

Justin Marinovich 13:54
Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of coaching elements that come where it stems from numbers that become very tangible examples for the rep can be as simple as, let’s look at the trending average number of days to when we first create an opportunity to when they actually make a decision on the vendor. Not the deal wins. But when we usually get that yes or no. Now, where the coaching comes into play is like, let’s say that average amount of time I’m gonna make up the numbers 40 days, right? So we know if you haven’t accomplished a, b, c, by date 35, your deal is at far greater risk than you think it is. So we can help eliminate those happy years. In some particular cases, let the number power that coaching, understand how that’s different from rep to rep because I truly believe that there is no perfect accountant. Everybody’s a little different. Everybody’s good at some stuff. They have gaps and opportunities in areas. So it’s about really leaning into who that person is and letting the data tell them their story on where they can improve and really hone in on the coaching for that individual. So that’s just one very simple example of where a number can power that coaching to change the motion of an account executive make them a better rep. That’s great that one, but there’s an easy one.

Pete Thornton 15:05
No, no, no. It totally is. I’m asking from like an enablement perspective, because you work with different sales leaders. And then there’s some are like, I just wish I could scale you, because they’ve got it internally. They’re like the best highest level I see that happens to be in a management leadership role now. And then there are other people who see it from a little bit more of that standpoint, it’s really good because you can work with them on things like that, and roll out those more scalable processes. Not one is better than the other. But when you’re trying to take it in, like, Oh, we’ve hired 74 people this year, I sure would like to have that aspect in one of the leaders at least to be able to kind of like roll these pieces out.

Okay, what about Betterworks then? Definitely have to lay the foundation for Betterworks. You may have mentioned, but tell us a little bit more about Betterworks. And then what is the kind of what’s the context for hypergrowth? Like, why is it growing so fast? There was a series B, there was an extension to the series D like there’s a lot of interest in higher valuation. So would love to know about Betterworks.

Justin Marinovich 16:02
Sure, yes. Did my plug on Betterworks a little early, so I appreciate you bringing it back around. Look, Betterworks, we are flipping the old antiquated annual performance review that doesn’t add any value to the manager or employee throughout the organization. on its head. We are modernizing performance management and changing that to performance enablement, we are making the conversations between managers and employees much more valuable and forward-looking, not just having this once-a-year, check-the-box process where I try to remember everything the employee has done over the last 12 months, let alone what I ate yesterday, and somehow have that add value to who they are as a person and what they need to do to be successful and organization. But you do it on a much more frequent basis. And you’re able to tie that to things like goals and how those goals are connected throughout the organization. Visualize that information at different pockets in the organization, from CEO all the way down and allow organizations to work in the way visualized work in the way that it actually gets done cross-functionally with others out in organization and pair that with those ongoing coaching conversations, the ongoing performance reviews, the full 360 feedback, capabilities, recognition, surveys becoming that central source of truth for the employees body of work in the most unbiased way. And then eight, enabling the managers to become better managers. This is one reason why I actually am a huge fan of better work. So we use our own solution internally. And it gives me a framework to be a very effective manager and have everything about that employee in one picture on one easy page that we can digest and have a conversation around together so that we are coming into the same conversation on the same page, and continuing to build upon the trust that each other has in order for us to be successful. And then that we can continue to press forward. Rather than take a step back. And of course, as you would expect a modern SaaS, we have all that sexy analytics behind the scenes and forming HR telling you about your talent, talent pools, succession planning, calibration, executive dashboards, all that good stuff. But for me, the rubber meets the road and the value better works at that manager-employee level, because that’s where so much is getting done and with this hybrid environment that we are now accustomed to, and then I believe will stay with us forever. is even more.

Pete Thornton 18:24
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally is. It’s because, yeah, you’re gonna have to have some form of checkpoint that’s just a little bit tighter, you’re just not kept picking up those pieces, like you would naturally pick up those pieces in an office scenario. So is it roll agnostic? Like is this meant to roll out across an entire organization? It sounded like it, but just to make sure.

Justin Marinovich 18:44
It absolutely is. And that goes back to something that I talked about earlier, getting to the sea levels being so important, one of the toughest challenges because everyone’s fighting budget at the moment. But this is better works is something that touches everybody in the organization. So we’re not just selling marketing software in the marketing department, this, this affects every leaders organization. So it’s very, very frequent when the CEO will come in because it changes the way their organization works. And we see a lot of people that have been used to a very structured once a year, check the box process being a little adverse to this change, which is normal. So a big component of it is to also partner with organizations around the change management and the enablement that we can really their organization drive for this program, because anybody can sell a sexy good looking tool with pretty buttons. But if you don’t enable that organization to be successful with it just become shelfware right on didn’t add any additional value than it did for that old school once-a-year checkbox process. So it’s super important for us to partner with organizations and enable them from top to bottom, which is very different for at the sea level versus middle-level manager versus individual contributor. So we really take a personalized tailored configure approach to to not only the solution itself, and that’s how we’re able to scale to organizations that have over 150,000 1000 users globally in our platform for one customer, but also in the sense of going back to letting them be CEOs and owning the reason why their organization is adopting this change. And, and one of my favorite I’ll end with this is one of my favorite mantras that our CEO has internally that we truly believe in is the value has to outweigh the tax. And we believe that and everything we develop from our product perspective,

Pete Thornton 20:24
Okay, then I think I get us to complete. I’ve never heard the term tax like us like that before, but it elicits a certain kind of like emotional response. And I get like a fractional piece cracking off of something. So like, I think it’s a good phrase. What does tax mean, in this case?

Justin Marinovich 20:41
Sure. So have you been a part of like an annual performance review?

Pete Thornton 20:45
Yeah, literally this week.

Justin Marinovich 20:49
Yeah, it’s that time of year, we were just at a conference in Vegas. I just got back yesterday. And we’re getting a lot of people having a lot of similar conversations is that times a year, HR rolls their eyes because they know managers don’t do them. We hear managers is copying and pasting reviews for their employees, because they just got to get it done. And they don’t care. And then we got employees complaining about this doesn’t actually represent who I am. And then it doesn’t encompass their body of work. It affects promotions, bonuses, et cetera. And the analytics, aren’t there executives. So the idea is that currently, with tools out there today, people are spending a ton of time filling these out, engaging in them, it’s taking an immense amount of salary work hours, and it ends up being demoralizing. So not only is the tax of the time spent on it, not paying off, it literally provide zero value back to any part of the workforce. So what we believe is as to be extremely lightweight, integrated with all the solutions you’re using out there today, we meet employees in the flow of work. So native iOS and Android app, we have plugins right from your email window, you can provide feedback, update goals, lead recognition for Microsoft Teams, or slack, things you’re doing in Salesforce, Asana, JIRA, today will automatically translate into better work. So a lot of our elements are automated, or right where those employees and managers already are. So we make it easy. And then we bubble all that information up for when that check-in or lightweight review comes in on a quarterly basis.

Pete Thornton 22:19
Yeah, very cool. Like and I do like the workflow integration as well whenever— I won’t name names, but I know what the process is. Now you go over to it, you have to like go out of your workflow, which no problem, because I do it twice a year, right? Like, it’s not even quarterly, like so, whatevs. And the rollover there. And because it’s so difficult to like, interact with in all honesty, like I have a Google doc to the side, I shared the Google doc today because my manager could not access what I had put out ago. Don’t worry, this happens frequently. She’s newer, like, I’ve been around for a minute. And so I’m just like, I know to put it in here. So I shared the Google Doc, in the end, this is happening in a Google Doc.

Justin Marinovich 22:59
And in the economy we’re in now too, Pete. A year ago, we were talking about hypergrowth, someone had a new manager because someone else got promoted, it felt like every couple of months, how do you take that employees body of work and accurately inform that new manager for them to not always be restarting right and not have to have to take off from where they left off, but just keep going right and continue to be successful continue to drive now, we’re looking at an economy where some really big tech companies just laid off over 10,000 people in one fell swoop and other managers change for different reasons. Well, first off, did they make the right decisions? Did they have the analytics on their workforce to make those right decisions? Very, very confidently as executives and HR and managers all together? Or did they lay off some really, really good talent because I believe that there’s a lot of good talent that’s getting laid off out there. So we don’t fall in love this type of decisions as well. And then those people got new managers that that are staying but for different reasons. So how do you enable them be very successful? Because now what those organizations are requiring is that many of those managers are now doing about 150-200% of the work that they were previously doing. Yeah. efficient with their time and going back to that element of not only time management externally for sales reps, but time management internally for sales leaders. I think thinking about that holistically has is super critical.

Pete Thornton 24:17
Yeah, nice. Okay. I get the need understand the value. I like the phrase tax it’s like is it taxing? Because that’s like a piece of it? And then is there value there on the other side? So that’s, that’s helpful.

This is just purely curiosity: This is people ops, HR-type thing, but it needs to roll all the way to the CEO. Is that kind of like the point of contact and these are the people you haven’t more conversations with?

Justin Marinovich 24:44
Yeah, HR is certainly our first one to contact VPs of HR talent development, organizational development, employee experience, etc. But I always recommend organizations obviously, it’s much easier said than done since executive time is so protected. But what I have found is that CHR OHS that get involved early in conversations have much stronger programs right off the bat, because there’s less Lost in Translation throughout that evaluation. And then usually as we get sort of halfway tail end, and it becomes very real would become voc. That’s when the CEO will step in and want to understand like, Okay, how does this affect my organization operationally, between all the departments, an interesting title that we don’t tend to see often, but when we do it becomes it can become very exciting as CIOs because they’re, they’re responsible, lower that tech debt, building efficiencies throughout the organization and creating that technological cross collaboration within all the departments in keeping on that innovative contract. That’s really what we’re doing. We’re bringing the organization together at a much more efficient scale, though, that individual relationships, but also department to department.

Pete Thornton 25:48
Yeah, I can understand it, because we do have kind of like, three, four criss-crossing apps that kind of do similar esque sorts of things. And so I know who would want to be involved there. So it’s interesting. Yeah. All right. Well, that’s great. You may have answered some of these other pieces along the way, because we’ve talked a lot about growth and some of the different things that you’re doing along the way for your own company, as well as others. But any particular challenges that like you sense, with hypergrowth in general, like it’s just different being in a big but slow movement organization than being small and nimble and making quick pivots all the time. So in this like Hyper Growth space, that it sounds like you’ve been in from the word go, any particular challenges that you see time after time?

Justin Marinovich 26:32
Yeah, it’s something I not only feel directly, but I see in a lot of my networks, companies, and I have discussions and always stay in touch with the network, as best I can. It’s being able to continue to move quickly. Well, staying nimble as new processes develop. So I think something that’s really critical for leaders to own and spend time thinking about is the why, why are we making this change? How does it improve ourselves from top to bottom, not just changing to change or not just adding another process, because we’re growing here? Because we’re scaling, but understanding the why behind it. And that goes back to that individual ownership, right? If people can understand that, why they can get behind it and own it themselves. And that’s where you see organizations not slow now, is when people are questioning it, or adverse to that change, or they’re the silent, maybe my majority, usually minority that are going to be preventing, perhaps even blocking it internally, is where that scale starts to go arise. So really understanding and thinking through the why and getting folks to own it effectively, can really help when you think about hyperscale and continue to grow effective, and intelligent. I think there’s smart scale. And then they’re super scale, right? Is that scale being may it being decisions being made through wisdom, or through excitement? I think we saw a lot of organizations over the last 12 months get powered by growth and excitement, and over-rotate on their hiring. And that’s leading to some tough conversations right now. Right? Yeah, tough decisions that affect people’s lives. And so I think as long as you can continue to apply wisdom and have that steady hand at the wheel, through the good times and the bad times, and just getting behind the why, and really understanding that and describing it is critical for that growth.

Pete Thornton 28:21
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Any recommendation, like if you were to speak to a CEO right now be like, Hey, we see this all day, every day, right? I have personally experienced this in my own company companies, like any way that that can be meant and rolled out to the team. I’m thinking specifically, because I’m like, we have had all hands that have grown this postman organization and speaking up 30 minutes, one hour, hour and a half, two hours, and then, whoopsie, we go over every time to like two and a half hours, two hours and 45 minutes, like your eyes are like being blinded from zoom, as you’re preparing for your next meetings anyway, like that is staying in touch and collaborating. And you can may be able to describe the why there. But like, is there any method of doing that across these dispersed teams that you’ve felt has been more practical?

Justin Marinovich 29:04
Absolutely. Do your research at frontlines. Take pulse information on your employees get a broad sense of how employees are feeling and do it in a very, very continuous way. And then take that information and see how it compares with frontline managers, managers of managers all the way up. And really make sure you have a good grasp and understanding of the pulse of the organization from top to bottom. And that can’t be once a year, that’s got to be we move too fast. And in today’s environment for once a year to be acceptable, right, we’ll need to be able to keep that consistent understanding throughout the organization. And if you can, if you can get that information in a very, very effective way better works can certainly help with is being more confident in that you’re making the right decisions for your organization as leaders. So I think I think that’s one way to one way to do it. There’s plenty out there but that’s something that I think everybody should take into consideration that can apply regardless of the industry you’re in.

Pete Thornton 30:02
Nice, okay. It makes sense to me to like, especially the continuous piece that way. It’s not like, oh, there’s a crisis. Now you want to know, like, it’s like you have a baseline that way too. Like, maybe that’s the way that person is felt the whole time. Like, you don’t actually know whether it’s situational or ongoing. Yeah, timely conversation today. This is so funny, just because of what was going on earlier today, literally, with all the things I was doing.

Okay. Big journey for you. I know so much more ahead. And everything. Do you happen to have a couple people along the way? I mean, it doesn’t have to be the billionaires you met at the end of college, or it could be, but anybody to think along the way for this kind of like, journey that you’ve been on?

Justin Marinovich 30:42
Yeah. Who would I be if I didn’t think my wife and my parents. They’ve always be there support me. Obviously, startups over a roller coaster. So I’d be pouring a cocktail after work for a good reason or a bad reason. But Diane, my wife was always there. By my side for those I mean, and make them we kind of think outside the box a bit. But I think more recently, from a professional setting, I genuinely can’t thank my leader CRO Shep mocker, and our CEO, Doug Federline enough, I think putting me in the position to be able to grow in an organization and have that level of trust and be a multiplier effect. For the sales reps that are on the commercial team and across the board at Betterworks. Just simply can’t thank them enough. And they are true servant leaders, true coaches, and I tried to emulate a lot of the things that they have instilled in me down to the rafts, and we’ve seen that pay dividends. So big shout out and thank you to all those folks.

Pete Thornton 31:42
Yeah, that’s great. Okay, super cool. I hope that we’ll also we’ll send this one their way when it’s time lapse is that I mentioned. Like, don’t forget to check out this moment here for your particular. It’s performance review time, of course.

Justin Marinovich 31:58
Hey, man, we’re quarterly, we’re light touch.

Pete Thornton 32:01
It’s so good. Yeah, it’s a great way to do that, especially as those teams grow. I’m a first-time actual manager for the last few years because it’s manager, but it’s a managing process. It’s not people. And then you bring the people in love people, former teacher, former coach, those kinds of things, but like those pieces, like you need to treat them strategically and well. And so when they come in, you want to take them seriously. And then sometimes the seriousness at which you take them doesn’t line up with, like, what you’re able to convey across the line. So I know why it’s important. The SaaS(ramp) Podcast is what this one’s called. It means different things to it means something in particular to me, but it doesn’t matter. This is for the audience. So well, last question would be, what does it SaaS(ramp) mean to you?

Justin Marinovich 32:45
Yeah, SaaS, for me, goes back to that speed to execution. And having that element of that, not only curiosity as a rep, or as a business, urgency behind that curiosity, because I believe the more urgent you can be, the speed and the, the speed, the execution will increase. And I think that’s where a lot of SaaS organizations as they re up, can continue to double down on because as organizations grow, it’s very natural for that speed to slow down. So I think maintaining nimbleness and effectiveness and continuing to keep up with the pace of work throughout your organizational processes. That’s what SaaS(ramp) is, to me, it’s about growing, it’s about growing wisely and effectively. Kind of like wildfire and all over the place, but having, having reason and purpose behind it. I think that’s been amazing.

Pete Thornton 33:43
I like that. Let me break down just a quick summary for Justin here. There are two phrases that you use today that I will take away from this and use this. I have to use it tonight or it’ll go away. But it’s urgent curiosity, that that you mentioned it two times. And it might be like one of the values you actually instill or something like that. It might not be off the cuff at all like but I really like that. And then this value over tax or I don’t know how that went. But the idea of a tax coming because there is a cost of course there’s a value but this is a comparison. So the tax piece, those two things right there alone, I’m just like, oh, price of admission right there.

Justin Marinovich 34:19
I love it. Good. Glad. Hey, as long as you can walk away learn one thing. I feel I can do my part today.

Pete Thornton 34:25
You did. You did. We thank you. Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, actually, yeah. Appreciate it. Justin, thank you so much. Thanks on behalf of The SaaS Ramp Podcast as well. A ton of good insights today and just great to meet you and all the best kind of moving forward with better works. I kind of know what that should look like now. So now I’m pissed. Thanks a lot.

Justin Marinovich 34:45
Hey, now you got some feedback for your organization. No, Pete, super thankful. Likewise been a pleasure speaking with you, and wish you all the best look forward to staying in touch.

Pete Thornton 34:55
Awesome. Thanks, Justin.